It will be represented in this scientific event to safeguard the seas with the help of the Cádiz Free Trade Zone through the challenge to quantify and raise awareness about ocean trash presented by UCA researcher Carmen Morales
This challenge was the winner of the Ocean Hackathon Cádiz, held from October 9 to 11 at the facilities of the Cádiz Consortium
The final will be virtual due to Covid-19 and will be broadcast live and open from the assembly hall of the Heracles building in the Zona Franca
The jury will be made up of 19 members, among which a representative of the French Ministry of the Sea stands out. On behalf of Cádiz, the delegate of the Free Trade Zone, Fran González, will participate as a member of the jury.
The Ocean Hackathon 2020 projects the potential of the province of Cádiz around the Blue Economy within the actions of the high-tech incubator of the Zona Base project promoted by Zona Franca with a grant from Feder Funds 2014-2020 “A way of doing Europe"
Cádiz will once again be the epicenter of research in the Blue Economy this Friday, December 4, with its presence in the grand final of the scientific event around the sea Ocean Hackathon 2020, in which it will compete with ten other seafaring cities. All participating localities selected their finalist challenges from a total of 83 projects on October 11 after a 48-hour marathon of research into the creation of tools for the improvement of the oceans.
It must be remembered that the challenge that represents Cádiz in the grand final was the winner of the Ocean Hackathon Cádiz organized by the Zona Franca, called “Quantification of ocean litter using images (I-LITTER)”. This project wants to raise awareness about “garbage” as an enemy of the seas and oceans through images and is led by UCA researcher Carmen Morales along with 8 other researchers.
The grand final will begin at 3:00 p.m. and will finally take place virtually live and open to the entire public due to the impossibility of doing so in person in Brest as initially planned due to the measures to alleviate Covid-19. . The Cádiz Free Trade Zone has made the assembly hall of the Heracles building in the interior venue available to the finalist challenge and the organization, from where the entire final will be projected, which is expected to last two hours.
Thus, the final sequence includes that each team connected with the rest will present their challenge, along with interaction sequences and videos to better understand the Ocean Hackathon community. Subsequently, the jury will proceed to deliberation, made up of 19 members, 8 “ambassadors”, representatives of French entities as prestigious in this edition as the Ministry of the Sea or the French maritime cluster; and a representative of each of the eleven organizing entities for each participating city: Ancona, Bologne-sur-Mer, Brest, Cartagena, Deshais, La Rochelle, Mexico, Split, San Malo, Toulon and Cádiz, whose member of the jury will be delegate of the Free Trade Zone, Fran González. The jury will assign its score to those it considers the best projects and the sum of the points will determine the places on the podium. It should be noted that the jury of each city cannot rate the challenge that it represents.
The celebration of the grand finale of the Ocean Hackathon is the culmination of months of intense work around the Blue Economy and research into challenges to improve the condition of the oceans. With this premise, the Free Trade Zone Consortium got on board with the organization of this prestigious scientific event in which it also had the participation of the University of Cádiz (UCA), the Campus of International Excellence of the Sea CEIMAR and the CEEI Bahía de Cádiz.
Thus, the Ocean Hackathon of Cádiz, held from October 9 to 11, was a success in participation since it brought together 57 researchers around different challenges such as the aforementioned winning challenge of detecting marine litter through images; a mobile application to promote a new, more inclusive and sustainable blue tourism model, which came in second place; or fuel savings to optimize navigation routes, which won third prize. In general, high level of the participants who made the city a laboratory of ideation through technology and different variables and scientific data, with which they contributed proposals and challenges of great interest for the protection of the oceans.
With the participation of Cádiz – and also Cartagena – thanks to the Cádiz Free Trade Zone, this event was held for the first time in Spain. In fact, its celebration has been the first internationalization action of the High Technology incubator linked to the Blue Economy developed by Zona Franca de Cádiz within its Zona Base Cádiz project, which is subsidized with funds granted by the Pluriregional Operational Program of Spain Feder 2014-2020 “A way of making Europe” and managed by the Incyde Foundation. In this sense, all the challenges participating in the Cádiz Hackathon have obtained a free stay in the incubator that sees the light of day to be a valuable tool to consolidate and project the enormous potential in the marine field of our province.
